Have you ever been misled by an abstract, leading to wasted time or resources in your research?

Answer Explanations

• Yes

  user-753537
  misled: yes
  leading to wasted time or resources: usually it becomes clear from the fulltext that the abstract was misleading, so some time wasted but nothing major. 
• Yes

  user-932367
   Yes, being mislead by an abstract is a regular problems for researchers. Abstracts are intended to provide a succinct summary of the research, but they can occasionally oversell the results, leave out important details, or mislead the findings. This can result in lost time if the paper is irrelevant or lacks depth.
  
  For example, during my research on GLOF hazard assessments, I came across several articles whose abstracts promised extensive risk analysis utilising unique approaches. However, upon examining the entire text, the methodologies were either less inventive or the data was inadequately robust to draw meaningful conclusions. This resulted in time wasted reading the paper, seeking to adapt approaches that were not as applicable as first anticipated, or devoting resources to an unproductive path.
  
  Such experiences emphasise the importance of thoroughly evaluating abstracts and skimming through the key sections of a work before delving deeper. Have you come across anything comparable throughout your research?
• Yes

  user-306236
  unfortunately some papers exaggerate their findings and use some title and abstract that is not fit with their actual finding in the main text.
• Yes

  user-143013
  In the cancer research, the results are sometimed overstated.
• Yes

  user-74194
  The abstract fails to provide specific details regarding the conclusions of the paper
• Yes

  user-259663
  Many times, when reviewing articles and research papers, I have found poorly structured summaries, with no data to support the claims, incomplete methodologies and no references. This has made me waste time and money.
• Yes

  user-801500
  Many of the abstracts do not tell anything about the research performed, leading to waste of reading.
• Yes

  user-548373
  - Key findings are not highlighted 
  - Exageration and not showing limits
• No

  user-683654
  I have not taken time to study that.
• Yes

  user-504085
  Wasted something like 6 months trying to reproduce the published method on enzyme immobilization.
• Yes

  user-34543
  this is common for the review type of articles. Some abstracts with very vague language can promise more insights than the actual review delivers.
• Yes

  user-956772
  It is not uncommon to find abstracts that announce results and conclusions that are not supported by the body of the paper and the experimental data.
  
  
• Yes

  user-350867
  Some abstracts overstate the results and upon reading the paper the statements in the abstract are unsupported.  Just wasted time
• Yes

  user-205824
   a researcher might rely on an abstract to determine whether a paper contains relevant data or methodology. If the abstract is vague or omits key details, they might read through the entire paper only to find out it doesn’t contribute to their work. This can be frustrating, especially in fields with a high volume of publications, where time is precious. 
• Yes

  user-606148
  overly strong wording of claims, and/or insufficient information on strength of evidence
• No

  user-836452
  I have never based a research decision just on an abstract.
• Yes

  user-66641

  I thought I had some interesting data on an interesting molecular mechanism for our line of research, and that was not the case. It was a bad article

  
  
• Yes

  user-530848
  The methodology section of the abstract was misleading. 
• No

  user-90908
  Misled yes, but no waste
• Yes

  user-86763
   Inadequate abstracts significantly hinder data collection for meta-analyses, often forcing us to search for the full text (frequently behind a paywall) only to find that it lacks the necessary information. 
• Yes

  user-832173
  Sometimes, you download a paper and when you are goong to read it. It is not what you expected to be.
• Yes

  user-359902
  relatively often, the abstract is the best of a publication (with profound description of M&M, results and their discussion missing in the main text). Ordering a paper because of a misleading abstract has cost me immense amounts of money and caused time loss and frustration.
• Yes

  user-909355
  When preparing a manuscript, the abstract of cited paper is very important as most readers will stop at the abstract to look for results.
• Yes

  user-890212
  The abstract had misleading findings which did not represent the actual findings in the full article.
• No

  user-69401
  NA
• Yes

  user-36174
  some scientist write smart title and abstract when you in depth you will flot and will not get what was stated
  some others also write in different methodology
• Yes

  user-915
  Misleading abstract is a time consuming and campaign for wrong information